Laura S. Jones

Writer and More

In A Nutshell

What happens behind the beautiful and the ugly doors? Is it really different?

I'm interested in how people become who they are. How they choose where to live, who to love and what to do. How their choices and reactions affect their next choices and next reactions. How their mistakes and successes and other people's mistakes and success form them. How one thing can change everything. In answering these questions, I explore the lives of the underdog, the outsider, the seeker, the unsettled.

MYSTERIES

Fouled Out

It’s an open and shut case. Everyone says the only question is whether Connor Braxton deserves to die for killing his girlfriend and a teammate. But reporter (and former swimmer) Gale Hightower’s instincts tell her that there is more to this tragedy — and more people involved in it. People who set things in motion that a college kid was powerless to stop. But can a killer be both guilty and innocent? In Fouled Out, my mystery about the shadowy intersection of greed, drugs and college sports, the answer is maybe. Click here to purchase paperback or e-book editions, click here for a summary sheet, and click below for a sample.

Bell Buoy - Coming Soon

Set in a small town on Cape Cod, Bell Buoy begins with a fire and ends with a new beginning.

More

Articles and Essays

My articles and essays have appeared in The Washington Post,Virginia / Maryland Dog Magazine, SWIMMER (where I was the staff writer for several years), and The Daily Progress (where I had a column called Fitness Frontiers). My specialties include profiles of people doing interesting things, the law, health and science news, dogs, and swimming.

Blog

I also sporadically maintain a blog called Fins and Paddleswhere I explore new ideas and react to the bits of the world that I can process. It's fun. If I were a musician, I might think of it as improvisation. Come to think of it, it is improvisation, done in the moment for the moment.

Design and Advocacy

I have worn many hats in my professional career. Attorney, arts administrator, publisher, cleaner and more. Should you need an attorney or designer, I am happy to discuss your project.

13 Short Stories and a Pit Bull Memoir

Saving Sadie and Sasha

Sadie and Sasha’s transformation from abandoned, near-feral dogs into beloved pets was never easy (although it was often funny), and the outcome was never certain. It took almost a year, a 3,500 mile road trip in the middle of winter, crazy amounts of hot dogs and coffee, a volunteer co-pilot, a canine hitchhiker named Pooch, an amazing husband, some serious money and a lot of help but I saved Sasha and her sister Sadie. This is not a dog training book. There are probably a hundred things I did wrong in my quest to help these dogs become fit for life on the “outside.” Nor is it a book about how pit bulls make the greatest pets. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. No, it is a book about how a year changed my life. It is about loving dogs, and making a gradually larger space in your life for the ones that really need you. Profits go to pit bull rescue groups.

Breaking and Entering

The 13 stories in Breaking and Entering are about relatively ordinary people who experience beauty and tragedy in their lives when they least expect it. Each story in the collection explores a facet of what happens when the barriers or bonds between people break down. These breakdowns can be caused by a chance encounter, a long forgotten choice or a simple mistake. Breaking and Entering is also the title of the first story in the collection. It is about a man who has just helped his beloved terminally ill wife die, when an odd pair of burglars break into his house and give him a reason to live. Fallout Shelter, another story in the collection, was initially published in Short Story America's inaugural anthology, available at www.shortstoryamerica.com.

Contact

Send me your questions, comments, complaints and curiosities, and I will try to reply promptly and politely, since my mother would not want anyone to think I was raised by wolves. You can also email me directly: Lsjones23(at)gmail(dot)com